Beth Wonders's Arc

Chapter 13 of 29

The corridor spat Beth out into her own cathedral. She knew the smell before her eyes adjusted — moss, cold stone, the faint sugar of star magic. She was home in the half she still owned. The other half stood behind a wall of ice at the far end of the nave, blue and silent, sealed since Frostwyn's magic had stopped the thing climbing her roots. Beth walked to the ice wall. She pressed her palm flat to it. Nothing screamed back. Nothing moved. But she could feel where her magic ran thin on the other side — a whole wing of her world going quiet without her. Half her cathedral. Half her work. Locked away to keep her alive. "Fine," she said. "New door, then." Her cat trotted out from behind a pillar, six-toed paws silent on the stone. He had found his way back before her. Of course he had. He butted her shin and then walked off toward the south transept, tail up. Beth followed. She had built a vanity there weeks ago — purple wood, a black scrying mirror, tarot spread across the top. She had used it to look at faraway places when her magic was strong. She was weaker now. The tower had drunk half of what she had. But she still had the small hot knot of star magic under her ribs, and she still had a mirror that looked, not a mirror that opened. She sat down. She spread her hands over the black glass. "Show me the other side," she said. "Not through. Around." The glass darkened, then cleared. She saw her frozen nave from the wrong side — from inside the sealed half. Empty. The thing that had screamed was gone or hiding. Good. Then the view drifted, the way scrying does when it finds what you actually need. It settled on a wall she did not recognize: raw stone, a crack running floor to ceiling, and beyond the crack, a soft silver-blue glow drifting through the trees outside her world. A faceless orb, pale as a moon, floated past the crack. It paused. It came back. It hung there in the gap like it was waiting to be let in. Beth understood. Her world had a seam she had never finished sealing. Something outside had found it before she had. A spirit, maybe. A gift, maybe. A second breach, definitely. She stood up. The cat wound between her ankles, purring like a warning. The ice door stayed shut behind her. She would not get that half back tonight, or maybe ever. But the sealed half was no longer her only problem. Something new was pressing at a crack she hadn't known she'd left open, and it was already inside the trees. Beth wiped the mirror clean and went to find the crack.